Public domain 2014, what’s in, what’s wrong, what to do

This January authors who died in 1943 re-joined common cultural heritage, in legal wording they entered public domain. From that moment (70 years after death) we can legally publish, remix, translate their works without asking for permission and paying money (of course we still should attribute them as authors). Here are some of them:

Can you imagine that we have to wait 20 years more for liberate their works? Even though Berne Convention (international agreement about copyright) allow 50 years term? It works this way in Canada for example, and used to in Poland before we joined EU. But few active fellows convince European politicians in 1993 to prolong it to 70 years. I’m sure that most of citizens has the same feeling as me that it doesn’t work for our good. Fortunately just now we have an unique opportunity to say it laud by writing few nice sentences to European Commission as a part of the consultations that EC announced month ago. You can do it in your own language but have to use their document and then send to: markt-copyright-consultation@ec.europa.eu

Here you can find model responses by Amelia Andersdotter but you can just write what you think, like, dislike and want regarding to your right to use culture in cyberspace as an answer to q. no 80. The deadline is 5th of February this year. It is possible to stop that absurd, let’s DIWO!